Intel vPro

Intel vPro is another important technology coming directly from Intel's labs to our PCs. So what is vPro? It is a hardware-based management technology, that allows you to remotely control computers over a network - be it the internet, VPN, or any other type of network (note: WiFi might be possible with correct controller integration onto the motherboard). This brings us to the next point, and that is the necessary hardware to use vPro - solely a vPro enabled motherboard.

Lets say you work as an administrator at a large company, with thousands of PCs. You happen to run into a situation when a PC can no longer boot, due to a hard drive failure. Before, you would have to go over to the computer, either change the HDD or manually start it up, and reconfigure the BIOS to boot from a network image. With vPro, this is greatly simplified - from the comfort of your office, you remotely connect to the PC concerned, and configure its BIOS so that it can boot of an image - saving both time and money.

vPro's capabilities are much greater, however. Not only do you have full control over the BIOS, you can also see the complete hardware configuration of the PC (this is written to memory at POST). Scheduling tasks, such as virus scanning, is also easily doable with vPro.